Lord of the fly-on-the-walls

Filmmaker Paul Watson remains outside the TV establishment despite having created some of Britain's most talked-about documentaries. Tina Ogle meets the maverick whose latest film, The Queen's Wedding, is on Channel 4 next month

Paul Watson, revered and reviled documentary maker, is busy comparing himself to a dog. The man who arguably invented the docusoap in 1974 with his then astonishing series The Family is attempting to explain what he sees as his misfit status in British television.

'Have you ever read about dogs that go down streets and they always get attacked because they just don't smell right?' he says. 'That's me, I take care, I splash it about a bit, but I just don't smell right.'

If this is true, the man who turns 60 this week has had a remarkable career despite the bad odour. Author of 300 films during his 30 years in television, Watson is one of Britain's best known presences behind the lens. The highlights of his career have been events, argued over not just by academics and media analysts but by ordinary viewers forced to challenge their own preconceptions. Films such as The Fishing Party, which followed the antics of the upper middle classes, and Malcolm and Barbara: A Love Story, about the onset of Alzheimer's, have burnt deep into the nation's subconscious.

Always a controversial figure, Watson earlier this week parted company with Granada, which made his latest film The Queen's Wedding. He is unable to speak about the circumstances of his leaving but is keen to discuss his latest work, born out of the desire 'to make a long portrait about a few gay people'.

Set in and around Manchester's gay community, the film follows the lives of various gay men who are also drag queens. At the film's core, with a nod to his last effort, A Wedding in the Family , is the marriage of two gay men.

'This is the antidote to my last film, which was middle England getting married. I thought I could challenge people's opinions about themselves and how liberal they thought they were. The question is: "What is love to two men?".'

He elicits the thoughts of some of the wedding's congregation and subjects, about love, sex, family and how it is to live the lives they choose in the twenty-first century. As is usually the case with Watson, the interviewees are candid to what looks like the point of carelessness. However, Watson insists that he drums into his subjects the possible dangers of being in his films.

Given the depth of homophobia in this country, illustrated by a sequence he shot in a pub full of unrepentant gay-bashers, surely this candour carries even greater potential risks? 'That is the worry I have and I constantly asked them about it. But how do you express the danger that these men live with on a daily basis because of their proclivities without describing it?'

As someone who has spent his career attempting to upset people to the point of political thinking, Watson has one great desire for his latest film.

With typical passion he says: 'What I would love, love, love to happen is to get a letter from a thinking ex-military man, Wiltshire division, who says "My wife watched your film and, well, she quite enjoyed it and I have to say that despite being shit shovellers they were quite nice chaps". And that, I think, would be a real advance.'

What emerges most clearly from talking to Watson is that he cares deeply about his subjects, the state of British television, his treatment by the powers that be and the criticism that is levelled at him.

He has been accused of being manipulative to which he counters: 'We all know what manipulation is, it's called editing. I used to be a painter and you put a colour next to a colour and they interact with each other. It's the same with films but you have to move things around with honesty to the subject otherwise you might as well write a drama.'

What has hurt him most is what he sees as an implied criticism that he couldn't have been anything more senior or responsible in television.

'I give masterclasses to young film-makers and I encourage them to be a bit naughtier,' he says. 'I think television is suffering from not having enough of that. The caution is enormous. The implied criticism of me is that I am not cautious enough to be responsible, and that hurts because I don't think you have to be, you just have to care and be humanitarian.'

So, cut loose from a major broadcaster once more (he left the BBC in the early Nineties), is he still driven to make films?

'Yes, I'm still a bloody optimist and I still haven't grown up, I just think you can still beat the buggers. I have, over my career, been lucky enough to invent three or four things that have been borrowed by other people, a certain type of fly-on-the-wall, a way of doing a political film, documentary soaps if you like. And I have just invented something that I think is my last throw of the dice and I'm tremendously excited by it.'

He won't go into any details about this new development but is gung ho about its chances of success. 'This new thing will give me even more opportunities,' he says. 'The last 10 years have been difficult because I've not fitted easily into television and I've not fitted easily into myself. Part of me understands that popular television is telling me to piss off but actually every film I make makes a profit.

'I will probably just fall off a twig after the next project and you won't hear of me for another hundred years.

'But here's the arrogance, I bet that in a hundred years' time if somebody shows my films they will be popular, and they will really say something about the last century. I would hope that their historical value is much greater than their present value - even though I make entertaining films because you can't be all doom and gloom.'

The Queen's Wedding is on Channel 4 on 5 February

Lives through a lens

The Family (1974)

A dirty-pans-and-all account of the lives and opinions of the working-class Wilkins family. This 12-part series was credited as the first 'fly-on-the-wall' documentary serial and made unlikely stars of its subjects. Matriarch Margaret Wilkins later split from her husband and Watson was accused by the tabloids of breaking up the family.

The Fishing Party (1985)

An astonished nation watched the upper middle classes at play on the polo field, on the river, with shotguns and in their palatial homes. Perhaps most memorable was the plummy-toned bachelor who opined that the only two reasons for getting married were to have children and have your wife drive you home drunk from a party.

Sylvania Waters (1992)

Who could forget Noeline, loud-mouthed matriarch of the nouveau riche Baker-Donaher family of Sydney? Their chaotic, noisy, hard-drinking antics fascinated and repelled viewers. One of the few subjects Watson did not keep in touch with Noeline threatened to 'wring his neck'.

The Dinner Party(1997)

Catching a bunch of outspoken Conservative voters at a dinner party just before Labour won the election, this candid film caused a stir because of the unpalatable views expressed by its subjects. Racism and homophobia were openly on display.

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